August 7 2002 SansRussCon Report

go problem courtesy of usgo.org

Marty hosted a SansRussCon while I was at the Go Congress (which Our Most Assiduous Reader will recall is the Best Week of the Year). He wrote the following SansRussCon Report.
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We had a fairly good turnout Wednesday night for the annual Russ-is-at-the-Go-Congress-so-play-elsewhere game night.

MarkH and Daniel showed up a little early, so we started setting up Dragonland. While we were explaining the game, Dan, Whendy, Fred, and Brad all showed up, so we split up and 4 played Dragonland, 4 played Tichu. It would appear there was a tie in Dragonland between MarkH and Daniel.

While we were playing those games, another group of folks showed up, including JeffF, Whindy, Adam and Steve. They started setting up Funkenschlag on the third table. While they were doing that, Kara showed up. I didn't think anything else would be starting for a while, so I offered to let Kara have my spot in Tichu and I joined the Funkenschlag game (which I really wanted to play anyway). Clay and Fred ended up winning out over Whendy and Kara in Tichu. From the way it sounded, there were quite a few bombs in the game.

JimG showed up just in time to join folks from the Dragonland game in a rousing game of Star War: Epic Duels. Clayton also showed up at around this time and relaxed by looking at books and Cds for a while. It would appear that MarkH won this one as well. Finally, with those games over, a five/three split ensued with a 3-player Carcassonne game, won by Brad and a Puerto Rico won by Daniel.

Most people took off at this point while we were nearing the end of Funkenschlag. Funkenschlag is a very interesting game of power utilities and power generation which employs map drawing which is akin to the Empire Builder games. However, much of the game also employs auctions and resource management. The goal is to connect at least 18 cities to your power grid. Whoever can power the most cities that turn wins. I managed to connect the 18th city, but could only power 17. that was good enough to clinch it for me, although it was very close. I think I had $2 left after connecting the 18th city, so I could only barely afford it.

Finally, the five of us from Funkenschlag stayed to try Mutabohn. It's another in the series of Bohnanza expansions. It was pretty interesting, but I won't try to describe it. Whindy won this one.

Finally, I found two pieces from Puerto Rico on the floor, so I will caution folks to check after games are played.

Someone left behind a pair of sunglasses.

Marty

No rankings were performed on this report. ;)

Here's an interesting link, though:

Time to take the iBook to Schlotzky's
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0208/08.schlotzsky.php

And if you want to read even more game report goodness, DaveB emailed this report about gaming the previous weekend:

We had a big group of people together over the weekend and played lots of games.

The most popular was Can't Stop (I finally got one from eBay). I only won once.

Puerto Rico was played twice (one game lasted until 5am). It was enjoyed.

Star Wars Epic Duels was played twice and loved.

Draco And Co. was played once. I liked it pretty well. It was a bit too random and wacky for my taste though. I understand a bit more what Faidutti's detractors don't like about his games. There were a few rules ambiguities that I feel any serious gamer playtester would have caught. There were some semi-dexterity actions as well that seem strangely out of place. We also ended up invoking the quirky rule where if there is a tie for the highest score then those people lose and the next highest score wins. While that's my favorite method for determining random things (like who goes first in a game) it seems very arbitrary that you go from first to last place simply because your score is tied. But the game itself was worth playing. It felt a little like Formula Motor Racing.

I finally got to play Res Publica. It is a simple trading game. We played it with 3 people which might not be as good as 4 or 5. For a trading game it was very friendly. You can't screw anyone and you don't really feel jealous when you are excluded from a trade (at least I feel that way in games like Settlers sometimes). It looks like it might have the "rich get richer" problem but it is easy to gang up on someone by boycotting his trades. I'm not sure if the game is deep enough though.. the trades seemed pretty straightforward (it was pretty much always 1 card of a type for 1 card of the same type although we did have some exceptions).

I played Halloween. It was okay. It felt very Prisoner's Dilemma but with less payoff for screwing someone. Generally trades went like "I'll give you 3 points if you give me 3 points". There might be more depth after a few plays.

Munchkin was played. I don't like the game and I don't know how it went although I did hear the typical laughter that you get when cards are read for the first time.

Surprisingly, Tichu wasn't played.

Dave